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Essay on Causes/Events leading to the Spanish-American War
The Spanish-American War started in 1898, and ended in the United States gaining control over the former colonies of Spain in the Caribbean and Pacific. The United States lost 379 troops in war and more than 5,000 troops to disease. Consequently of the war, Cuba would be declared as an independent state in 1902.
Main events and causes leading to the Spanish-American War
Through late nineteenth century Spain was left with merely a small number of scattered possessions in the Pacific, Africa, and the West Indies. A lot of the empire had gained its independence and a number of the areas still under Spanish control were clamoring to do so. Guerrilla forces were operating in the Philippines, and had been present in Cuba since before the 1868 to 1878 Ten Years' War decades. The Spanish administration did not have the financial resources or the manpower to treat with these revolts and resorted to effectively emptying the countryside and the filling of the cities with camps in Cuba to divide the rebels from their rural base of support. Several thousands of Cubans died of hunger and disease in these conditions, around 200,000 only in the more peaceful western Cuba. The Spaniards as well carried out various executions of suspected rebels and cruelly treated suspected supporters. The battle was a total conflict with Cuban rebels and Spanish troops flaming and destroying infrastructure, crops, tools, livestock, and everything moreover that might help the enemy. However, in 1897 the rebels had defeated the Spanish. They were determinedly in power of the eastern countryside and the Spanish could only leave urban centers in columns of significant power.
The events in Cuba corresponded with a fight for readership among the American newspaper chains of Hearst and Pulitzer. Hearst's way of yellow journalism would exceed Pulitzer's, and he infamously used the influence of his press to control American view in support of war.....
